Tag: politics

Happy Hanukkah to those readers who are celebrating! CLIMATE CHANGE Good news from the Arctic: Permafrost in the Arctic is thawing faster than ever, according to a new US government report that also found Arctic seawater is warming and sea ice is melting at the fastest pace in 1,500 years. The annual report released … Continue reading World update: December 12, 2017

IRAQ Iraqi forces captured western Anbar's large Akkas gas field from ISIS on Thursday. Akkas hasn't yet entered production so while this is a significant recovery for the Iraqis it's not a huge loss for ISIS--they weren't selling the gas. As for the Kurdish situation, little has changed since Baghdad declared an end to talks … Continue reading Middle East update: November 2 2017

EUROPE RUSSIA Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met on Monday on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum conference in Manila and, according to Lavrov at least, it was a Good Talk: Lavrov described his talks with Tillerson as lengthy and said they covered a wide range of topics, … Continue reading Europe/Americas update: August 5-7 2017

Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee (MOTTO: "Searching for Intelligence in the House of Representatives Since 1977"), contributed his best effort yesterday to the ongoing Republican war on objective reality. With the White House facing Congressional investigation over alleged Trump campaign ties to Russia and over President Trump's thus-far completely unsupported accusation that … Continue reading These gasses aren’t going to light themselves

FiveThirtyEight's Harry Enten wrote a piece yesterday on Joe "I Vote With Donald Trump Two-Thirds Of The Time" Manchin (D?-WV) and his value, much evidence to the contrary, to the Democratic Party: So I can see why progressives would be peeved with Manchin. But it’s sort of silly to compare Manchin to the median Democrat. … Continue reading The size of the tent doesn’t matter

Yesterday I tried to make the argument that it matters who the DNC chair is, insofar as that person should be up to the job of running the Democratic Party. I've seen people argue that the party chair is mostly irrelevant, and it seems pretty clear to me that that's not the case. I do … Continue reading Why Ellison matters